


Northern Lights

by seekwill



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Dining at the Ritz (Good Omens), Drunken Confessions, Elevators, First Kiss, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 06:37:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19969651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekwill/pseuds/seekwill
Summary: A celebratory and long awaited dinner at the Ritz. Drunk on champagne and possibility, Crowley makes a choice.





	Northern Lights

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [mrs-sakurai's lovely piece](https://mrs-sakurai.tumblr.com/post/186456325224/the-ritz-london-ive-got-you-now-and-im-not), first seen on tumblr.

_ Have you seen the northern lights? Aurora borealis. Glowing threads of electric colour blanketing the night sky. Have you felt that frisson, that jolt of joy knowing they were upon you? That night had blessed you with this earthly magic that cannot be touched, this thing of myths and legends.  _

_ People come from all over the world just to see it. Save up their coin for years and years, run into the wilderness at the very edges of civilization just to sleep underneath it, to love underneath it. Did you know? You must. You made them, didn’t you? _

* * *

“To the world.” 

Dinner is easy, meandering. Fulfilling a decades long promise to dine together without an agenda, no motive other than to simply enjoy each other’s company. When could they say they had done that? They are filled with the most intoxicating ease. There was no knowing how long it would last, and so they bask in it, let it settle on their skin.

Dinner isn’t the epilogue, the closing of a book or the ever after. The dinner is page one. They are on their own side now, a class apart. They were as mortal as celestial (or occult) beings could be. They chose what they could touch and hold in their hands. They chose the world as a way to choose one another.

Because that’s really what this was - the millennia long side quests and subterfuge, the arrangement. From the moment the angel and demon had met on Eden’s wall, watching the first vulnerable humans set out into the sandy unknown, their paths had been inextricably altered and intertwined. Eve had eaten the apple. But had she been tempted when she was always supposed to? There couldn’t have been anything other than this. In that way, perhaps it wasn’t a choice at all.

Over champagne, they laugh and reminisce and Crowley teases Aziraphale for keeping his socks on as he bathed in holy water, disguised in Crowley’s body, all limbs and length. “Is that the way you take a bath? In soggy knee-highs?”

“Certainly not.” Aziraphale replies over the rim of his glass. “I was merely trying to preserve your dignity, my darling.”

_ Darling. Mine. _

The space between them shimmers with promise. The events of the day had shown them, at least for now, that they were no longer accountable to higher powers, bureaucracies. Who were they accountable to now, if not to one another?

Each tiny movement, each glance, each minute that passes takes on a new and weighted meaning. It is gossamer light, not enough to change them, to mute anything even in the slightest. They delight in it, this magic that neither of them had meant to make. Was this what mortals called  _ chemistry _ ? It was. They had invented it, maybe, along the way.

When dinner is done, they stumble into the lobby, drunk on expensive champagne that still nipped at the back of their throats, crisp and dry. Their eyes meet, elysian blue and serpentine gold, obscured behind dark glasses. A pause, a second too long to be a mistake.

An idea born in the pit of Crowley’s stomach fireworks up his spine, sets the hair on the back of his neck on end. He knew temptation, yes, was intimately familiar with it. But desire was separate and had always been. It was so close to love, and demons weren’t allowed love. Said Hell, anyway, and who were they to him now?

Desire came easier to angels, given its proximity to love. But desire was still learned. Love was innate. Aziraphale could sense it always, and he knew despite the fall that Crowley had never lost it. The demon had tried to tuck it away, but the two of them were both made of it, mixed up in stardust and sand and things that no longer existed in this universe, except in them.

It would not be out of place to engage in earthly pursuits. How could it be? It’s what they had always done. Oysters and the Bentley and theatre and lovely old books. If logic meant anything to either of them at all, they could say this was the next logical step. But even humans know love and logic have nothing to do with the other.

“Come with me,” Crowley whispers to the angel, pulling him down a hallway.

“Where?” Aziraphale asks, going anyway, not waiting for an answer. Why does he bother asking? He would have gone no matter where Crowley led him.

A bank of lifts with golden doors. The two of them in mottled reflection. Waiting, waiting. Waiting for what? Thirty seconds feels like six thousand years.

The doors opened on to a miraculously empty lift. Crowley charges forward, his fingers intertwining with Aziraphale’s. His palms might be damp with nerves and need but he doesn’t care. He brings Aziraphale to face him, then reaches over to hit the “CLOSE DOOR” button with his finger several times in quick succession.

He is about to hex the bloody thing when arms reach around him. Aziraphale’s soft arms, clad in an impeccably tailored coat. This is what he had wanted but it is almost too much. For a second his knees stop working and the angel holds him up, holds Crowley to him, tight to his chest. They can feel each other’s heartbeats now, very nearly hear them.

Crowley forgets the buttons, forgets the doors, forgets everything but Aziraphale.

“Oh, my love.” Says Aziraphale, his voice backed with a tidal wave of want, it’s momentum built out of centuries of miracles, clandestine meetings, and shared meals. Of all he has ever allowed himself to dream or want. 

Who kisses who then? It’s impossible to say. They are moving together, in tandem. Crowley moans hotly into Aziraphale’s mouth, his hands grasping at the angel’s lapels. It fuels Aziraphale, and he pushes Crowley back into the lift panel. All the buttons light up at once.

The doors close.  _ Finally. _

Aziraphale’s fine hands run up Crowley’s sides, memorizing the lines of him, bringing him closer, even though there is no air between them any more. Crowley feels like fire on his skin. He bites Crowley’s lower lip softly, an impulse he is almost embarrassed by until Crowley keens and it sounds like hunger. Something cracks and slowly, almost imperceptibly, the world around them starts to fade away.

They stop kissing for long enough and just long enough for them to both say it. No one goes first, they were brought to the same moment, shared at nearly the same second. “I love you.” Certain, sure. The only solid thing when they both feel near delirious. 

There is something happening around them, but they do not notice. So wrapped up in one another that they cannot see that the walls have evaporated into space. They are enveloped in a blanket of stars. The ceiling replaced by ribbons of fluttering colour that make the air vibrate. If they looked (and they weren’t looking) they would see the kind of aurora that brought human ancestors to their knees. The kind of display that made them think the Gods were nearly upon them.

In this kiss, a tiny universe.

Was the entire world made for them? Now, there was a human thought. Self-centred, fallible.  But it felt true. Century after century, falling into one another’s orbit, balancing the scales. The one knowable thing in the unknowable plan. Nothing else mattered to them, except to be with one another.

The elevator will go out of service. No one will be able to fix it for hours and hours until it suddenly starts working again without human intervention, its doors opening to reveal an empty interior, that somehow smells of champagne and electricity.

* * *

_ When you close your eyes what do you see? I see startling shadows of red and green shooting through the darkness. The Northern lights, my darling. Did you make them for me? _

**Author's Note:**

> Connect with me on tumblr: [personal](https://bestoftheseekwill.tumblr.com/) and/or [Good Omens dump side-blog](https://jasmine-cottage-uk.tumblr.com/).


End file.
